


One price paid for every ticket

by Sand_Cursive



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-21 15:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6056137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sand_Cursive/pseuds/Sand_Cursive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This bus stop is a whole world unto itself. Bandaged limbs and clean but damaged faces mark every individual like the trademarks of a family. We’ll miss yous and Have a safe trips cloud every interaction, hang heavy in every lingering gaze. Everything is different, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fear of a life un-lived

**Author's Note:**

> A slow burn.

Words spiral through the muggy summer air like cigarette smoke, choking and infecting all bystanders. They are dangerous conversations, difficult to navigate through the sharp points of bittersweet affection.

_Goodbye._

This bus stop is a whole world unto itself. Bandaged limbs and clean but damaged faces mark every individual like the trademarks of a family. _We’ll miss you_ s and _Have a safe trip_ s cloud every interaction, hang heavy in every lingering gaze. Everything is different, now.

She presses an envelope into his hand and the freckles of her face line up in new constellations as she smiles. _For when you miss this place_ , she says, and he thinks _For when I’ll miss you. All of you._ They are the captive audience for the final act in this play. The heroes slays the dragon, happily ever after, exeunt stage left and the curtain comes down. All the blood, sweat and tears, and this world ends on a whisper. It seems too quiet, somehow.

They clamber on board, hands held, the straps of their bags tight in scarred and scabbing fists. Cold, stale air washes over them and brushes all their goodbyes away. They squeeze against the window, standing, hands pressed against the glass as this life drives away, their friends all standing on the edges, waving, shouting, watching. Even the gnomes come to pay tribute to their almost-queen, the multi-bear smiling at an executioner-turned-friend. They lie back on scratchy fabric when the last recognizable shadow has faded behind them, and the memories of this summer lie heavy on their hearts. They clasp hands between the seats.

The countryside is a tangle of meaningless beauty, and they are asleep before they roll into Piedmont.

 

The crispness of the air is the first thing they notice, when they wake up in the morning. The summer is over and their lives return to a strange state of mundanity. They go to bed at decent hours and wake up with the sun. They have breakfast with their parents, go back to school shopping, make up vague answers about their bruises and scratches. _We played outside every day!_ or _I learned to climb a tree!_ are more than placating to people who cannot remember the outside of suburban California. They taste autumn burning slow on the wind and they feel it in places deeper than they can name.

Summer is over.

School is a bright red mark on a hanging wall calendar with boy band faces cut-and-pasted over the bodies of kittens. They can see it approaching, every night. It comes fast at the end of a tunnel too blinding to look into and still they are shocked when it catches up with them, when they wake up one morning and have to pick up the book bags that have been carefully packed and waiting. They go down stairs and eat breakfast and walk the well worn path to the school and they feel like they are arriving different. The long brick building is the same, the gray top of the sports courts bear the same scuffs as they did last year, the hallways are as bright and narrow as they remember, but. They feel like they are walking into it for the very first time. Everything is there and they see it with new eyes. Their friends are the same if more tan, with wilder hair and bright eyes and wilder stories that they could beat with any of the ones tucked into their back pocket. They laugh at summer stories and go to class and feel the relentless drudge of time that’s parceled out and measured.

They laugh but they are different.

Their friends ask them for stories and they tell the ones they can - she doesn’t tell them the ones that frighten, and he doesn’t tell them anything that they would not expect. They hug and play catch up and feel like they are standing somehow taller than even John, who hit his growth spurt over the summer and is easily the tallest one in their year. They can see farther, they think, and late at night when they are home and lying restless in their rooms, they clasp their hands together and unfold a creased white paper and run their fingers lightly over signatures they could never forget.

Everything is different now.

* * *

 

It is two months into the school year, and routine has become just that. Classes are more difficult and yet still ridiculously easy and they spend as little time doing homework as they can. Mabel wakes up every morning and immediately turns to Dipper, who is already lying awake, before turning to the framed picture on her nightstand. They finally managed to get a good picture together, right before they’d gone. She wouldn’t have minded using the picture that she’d drawn, but crayon could only go so far. It was nice to see the real thing. Sometimes she picks it up, just so she can see them closer. The stupid fez, the glinting glasses. The smiles. Even if she doesn’t know where her Grunkles are right now, she can feel them, here, protective and smart and crass and warm and wonderful. So she makes sure, every morning, to look right into their smiling faces and smile back.

She wakes up and something is different. It is the middle of the night — her eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark, and wander her made up constellations on the ceiling; glow in the dark stars she had put up there when she was younger, barely able to reach. She stretches a hand up, fingers tracing lines she knows by heart. It crashes silently behind her when her muscles grow tired with the effort of holding it up, and she recites their names in a whispered chant under her breath instead. _The Buff Waffle. Kitten Court. Dreamy High School Romanctic Date on Swan Boats. The Fairy Princess Unicorn._ She closes her eyes and sighs and remembers dreams she’d had of finding a unicorn and befriending it and becoming its princess. The image of her flowing pink dress, of her heady flower crown and regal fairy scepter feel strange, somehow. The unicorn is bright and lovely and she pets it so lovingly and —. She bolts upright and throws a glance immediately to her left. The picture frame is gone.

Blankets are thrown in an arc across her body as she leaps from the bed, stumbling and clumsy. Her foot lands hard on something cold and the sharp crack of it makes her draw back abruptly, fall back on the sheets and strike her head against the wall. Limbs fumble in blankets as she pushes back up, ignoring pain, and picks the object off the floor. It’s still here. Her hands shake so hard she can barely make out the silhouettes against the spiderweb crack in the glass. She had forgotten. Only for a minute but she had. She clutches the picture to her chest and takes deep, heaving breaths and tries to erase the feeling of a life un-lived. It was real. It happened. It happened. It happened.

She didn’t hear the rustling, but suddenly there is a dip in her mattress and she is sliding towards a warm body, a heavy arm pulled rough around her shoulders. They don’t talk — she can feel the fatigue rolling off him in his hunched posture and loose grip. Dead asleep. She doesn’t tell him she’s okay.

When her breathing is low and calm, her head draped against his shoulder, he knows that she’s asleep. He tucks her back under messy blankets and replaces the picture on her nightstand and crawls back under his own covers. He’ll ask her in the morning. He’s never once forgotten.

He wakes up and something is different. Morning light streams in through gauzy curtains and catches dust like dancers spiraling in the glow. He shifts, sits up, the heels of his palm rubbed messily against his face. Sleep sits too easily in his eyes, and he presses harder as he tries to chase it out. His lids are still half closed when he turns and notices the bed beside his empty. Sheets are thrown back, nearly pooling on the floor in slow, soft lethargy. The bright lights of his clock don’t betray him. The alarm hasn’t even gone off, yet.

The button clicks loudly under the slap of his palm as he turns off the alarm. He swings smoothly out of bed, feet planting themselves firmly on sun-warmed wood. Clumsy fingers brush messy hair out of his eyes, shoulders swing inwards and out, a yawn works its way up his throat as he stands. He pulls the covers back over his pillow and shuffles slowly into the adjoining bathroom. Empty.

When he finally makes his way downstairs, teeth and hair brushed to varying degrees of order, she is already there, sitting on the low kitchen island and talking animatedly into the hand held phone they’d been gifted by their parents - a late present for their hasty arrival into their teenage years. He can see the glitter flaking off in her hands, (pink, this week, already lasting longer than history allows). The miniature knitted sweater cat charm is battered against her hand as she turns, gesticulating wildly with the other. Her eyes are clear and bright and unafraid.

He stands in the threshold, arms crossed over a slightly rumpled sweatshirt. The Mabel of last night has faded like a half-remembered dream. She sees him standing, smiles and waves him over with half a toasted waffle and a bottle of syrup, phone tucked securely between shoulder and ear.

“Thanks for picking up!” she finishes, picking the phone out delicately with two syrup covered fingers. “I’ll call you later, probably.”

He watches as the phone sheds glitter all over the table, spilling onto the edge of her plate. She swipes ineffectually with a finger before she pops the most contaminated piece in her mouth. “Who was that?” he asks, pierced waffle gesturing in the direction of her phone. She smiles too wide and half-masticated pieces of dough fall onto the table. “Gravity falls!” she answers, talking around a mouthful of fluffy breakfast. He nods without asking for clarification.

They lapse into a noisy silence; he chews slowly, mechanically, and squints. The sun is too bright through the east-facing kitchen windows. With the view obscured, he can almost imagine tall pine trees beyond, close and thick and hiding any number of fresh, exciting secrets.


	2. Last Year's Ringtone

She sits fanned by dappled sun spots, sprinkled over the ground through leaves like emeralds. Her friends lounge beside her, against tree and grass, catching the bright white tufts of dandelions against the fabric of their clothes. Knitting needles sit in her hands, still. A pinky winds idly through the working yarn: bright, soft merino.

“And then what happened?” someone asks, and she follows the yarn like it’s the thread of the story, looking for her place. “And then. And then he roller bladed by in a black bodysuit, and he was _still_ wearing the puppets. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever once saw his actual hands.” She gasps, thoughts swirling. “ _Maybe he didn’t have any!_ ”

They listen attentively — laugh at all the right moments, gasp at all the right parts — to a story that they do not wholly believe. They marvel at her storytelling and tell her afterward that she could write a book. Maybe she will. Gravity Falls is so very far away now, after all, and she is afraid that distance will blur some details. But she knits her sweaters and touches scars that haven’t faded and thinks to herself _They would have made me a queen_. And she picks up the stitch she dropped and keeps going.

Hers is not the only summer filled with failed romance, but she begins to think she is the only one who walked away from it with lessons tucked up her sleeves. They were her entire focus; she had invested too much of herself in every elaborate plan, in every contrived glance and interaction. She does not regret the pieces of herself she puts out into the world but she knows better now. When she gives, she remembers to give back to the one who’s giving.

“They don’t believe it,” she says into the phone tucked against her cheek. Her legs swing beneath her, heels kicking into the white doors of the cabinets. She picks at the cupcake beside her. “They think I’m making it up.”

“So what?” The voice is tinny but strong, even through all this distance. “Who cares if they don’t believe it? It happened. I was there and I saw it, and more importantly, you were there. That makes it real.”

Mabel traces an angry white line down her forearm and hums. “I just. I miss it lots. A whole lot. And it’s hard and weird to be here and not there anymore. It’s like when TV shows have specials for Halloween or something, and it’s super fun to watch but you remember at the end that none of it matters.”

“That’s stupid.” There’s no hesitation. “You saved a bunch of people, most importantly me, so don’t think for a minute that it didn’t matter.”

Highlighter yellow nails drop bits of cupcake to the floor, and Waddles snuffles at her feet, bright pink snout picking up stray crumbs. “I always had a great imagination. Everyone says so.”

“Wait, is that what this is about? Mabel, you’re not crazy. Everything that happened, happened. Ask your brother. And like, didn’t you bring back a pig? Wasn’t that a thing?”

“Waddles,” she sighs appreciatively, and brushes crumbs into the hem of her sweater. She’s silent for a moment, the sounds of the pig’s snuffling the only sound in the kitchen. “Thanks Pacifica. I guess it just helps to hear it sometimes.”

“Look, what do you want? Do you want me to send you pictures of my face or something every week? I’ll autograph them, no charge.”

A snort that makes Waddles look up, head tilted. “Can you really afford that?”

“Wow, that’s rude. Obviously I was joking. Every autograph will cost you five dollars.”

“Ahh, the high, high cost of friendship with a Northwest.”

The static on the phone buzzes a minute too long, and Mabel twirls a wavy strand of hair around one finger. “Pacifica? I was just joking —”

“Friends?” the reply is a whisper that she can barely make out. “You think we’re friends?”

“Um, duh, we talk like, every day. What, do I actually have to pay a friendship fee to be friends with you? Wait, am I actually going to be charged a fee?”

“No, god, you make me sound desperate.”

“So do I get the friendship discount?”

“On what?”

“On your autographed head shots, obviously.”

“Oh please, I wasn’t actually going to send those.” There’s a pause and the smirk comes through in every word she says. “Like you could ever forget me.”

* * *

 

She had first called the day before school began, voice a hesitant buzz through static as she’d asked “Mabel?”

“Yes, hello, this is Mabel Pines, proud owner of a brand new Cellphone! Wait, who is this?” She’d been so proud to get it, this brand new device, evidence of her growing maturity. Maybe growing up wouldn’t be too bad, if it came with perks like this. The shiny black case had been glitterized within an inch of its life the second she had gotten her greedy hands on it, puffy stickers and holographic stickers and smelly stickers slapped on one after the other in a messy collage. The decorations were constantly flaking off with every motion, but that just made room for new, exciting additions.

“Um. It’s Pacifica. Northwest?” The uncertainty was unsettling attached to this voice. “You sent out your number to like, everyone in Gravity Falls a week ago.”

“Oh, uh. Hi, Pacifica,” Mabel’d responded, slightly wary but too excited to be using her phone to actually hang up. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing! I mean, you sent your phone number out, and everything, so I thought maybe I should like, call you and you could have mine?” Silence. “I mean, so you could text me if you have any questions. About . . . cell phone . . . ownership.”

“Oh. Thanks! Hey, do you know how to get cats on your phone? Because I have been seeing a lot of talk about attracting cats onto cell phones but I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“What. No, that’s. It’s a game that you can download onto your phone, probably. Not that I would know about that. Specifically.”

“You can put GAMES on your phone?” she’d asked, excitement making the phone vibrate against her shoulder. She could already feel strands of hair tangling in the glitter.

“Yeah. . . You just have to go to the store and download it.”

“Which store? There’s a store for phone games?!”

Laughter came through, clear as a bell, and it sounded so easy, so free. “You’re so silly,” she said, and this time it felt different. It had none of the judgment or superiority that it had those many weeks ago. It felt like it was coming from a friend.

“I know.” A pause. “I’m being serious though, where do I get the cats? These are the questions, Pacifica.”

It took close to half an hour for Pacifica to walk her through the process, since Mabel accidentally hung up on their call more than once while they were doing it. The blonde had called back patiently, each time, until she’d finally given her own cell number and a list of steps to follow. Mabel called her back immediately after she’d finished.

“I got it! There’s only one cat though, which is kind of a huge disappointment. I was led to believe I would be crawling in kittens.”

“Well, at least you got it now.” Her voice was markedly softer, more subdued. Nothing more exposure to vitamin M couldn’t cure, Mabel was sure.

“So, how’s the ole’ GF?”

“. . . School starts tomorrow”

“Oh man, that sucks! Ours doesn’t happen for a whole ‘nother week!” Her cheeks were growing sore from all the smiling she was doing, but the line stayed silent. “Pacifica? Are you still there?”

“. . . I don’t know how to get to school.”

“What?”

“The driver is gone, and I don’t think my parents actually know how to drive a car, and we live somewhere totally different anyway, so I don’t even know where the school is from here, and —”

“Oh,” she said, and she said it with solemnity.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Can’t you call someone to drive you?”

A snort. “I don’t know anyone who _drives_. I’m thirteen.”

“No I mean, what about your friends? Can’t their parents give you a ride? Or like, one of your neighbors?”

“. . . People can have neighbors?”

“Yeah, of course. They’re the people who live beside you?”

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone lives beside me.”

She’d sat up abruptly, displacing Waddles from his perch at the end of his bed. He’d fallen with a disgruntled squeal and a reproachful look before trotting off, tail held high. “Pacifica, do you know where you live?”

“Well, duh, I’m sitting in my house right now.”

“No, no, no. What’s your address?”

“God, I don’t know.” The sounds of shuffling feet and shuffling paper buzzed intermittently through the line. “238 Bedford Road? Maybe . . . lane? The ink is really smudged on this mail.”

“Was it raining?”

“What? Who cares? Look, Mabel, I am walking to the window right now. I am now looking out of it. Oh wow, what’s that in the distance? Is that another house? No. It’s nothing. And now I’m walking to the other end of the house. Walking, walking walking. And what’s out this window? Oh, wow, more nothing! What a huge freaking surprise! There’s nobody out here!”

“Someone’s getting grumpy!” It was reflexive; the same way she dealt with her brother and all his moods. It hadn’t meant anything.

“You know what, I don’t even know why I called you.” And then the line went dead, mechanical consecutive beeps and prompts to hang up the phone blaring against her ear. She worried a strand of hair with the tips of her fingers, before popping it into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. Then she picked up the phone.

She knew technically it wasn’t her business. But she’d been asked (in a way). The blonde had reached out to her for help, and if she no longer wanted it, well then too bad. She should have read the fine print in the Mabel Pines agreement. There was no backing out of it.

“Hey, Soos, how’s it feel being the big boss man? Running the shack like a star? Anyway, I’m sorry to call so late, but can you do me a favor?”

She’d sent a text shortly after, staring at her phone for nearly five minutes once she’d hit send, waiting. The little screen illuminated the darkness of her bedroom, the sun sinking further over the edge as if it too was sinking into sleep. There was no reply. 


	3. As Summer Buries Spring

They talk almost every day. The phone is a nearly constant fixture, a glittery appendage growing between shoulder and cheek. It tangles in her hair once, twice, three times, until she learns to keep a comb hidden at the back of her phone case.

“Who is it?” Dipper asks, once, twice, every time he passes by, but she covers the mouthpiece with her hand and whispers GF and goes straight back to giggling girlish and high into the receiver. He stops asking, eventually, assumes that she is talking to everyone in that town, has them all on some impossible thirty-way call and it is as disordered and chaotic as a town council meeting.

When she finally hangs up, after an hour or more, and dives headlong into homework or a new craft or playing with Waddles, he peppers her with questions. _How is everyone? How’s the shack doing? How’s Wendy, How’s Soos? Fiddleford?_ She laughs while her hands are busy and tells him _Everything’s great!_ or _Wendy and Soos tried to build a treehouse out of tires from the flaming tire yard_ or _Fiddleford turned his mansion into another giant fighting robot._ They sound like tall tales, fanciful imaginings, but he has been conditioned to take these morsels as truth. He calls them, once a week or every other, and they tell him similar stories. He hangs up and closes his eyes and tries to imagine them as if he were there. These are days when his shared white-walled bedroom seems especially small, when the backyard view of suburbia seems like only a small part of an inescapable maze. The days of his life are as white-washed and featureless as the stucco, plaster houses. Shades and sounds are muted here.

Autumn falls to winter and he barely notices. _Living here is like purgatory_ , he thinks now. Nothing ever changes. There are no snowdrifts to slog through, no marks to leave behind. Time is passing him by and he is a shadow in the world. He can feel himself falling into the quicksand of this trap, pulled deeper and deeper until blue fire and magic crystals are only passing thoughts. He takes his tests, does his homework, hangs out with his sister.

An English teacher (one of his favourites), asks him to stop by after school. He walks in, stands in front of the desk, and accepts a pamphlet handed over with all the ceremony of an illicit bribe. He turns it over, flips it open idly and looks up with a question in his eyes. His teacher smiles, wide and knowing. “What are your plans for the summer?”

And just like that, the first semester is over.

He corners his sister in the kitchen during the holiday break as she’s fishing something out of the sink, sweater pushed up to her elbow. Waddles runs around at her feet, determined to be at the centre of her universe. “What are you doing?”

She spins and slips, arm caught on something. “I dropped my friendship bracelet.” Her brows are deeply furrowed to show the depth of her distress. The ends of her hair swirl in the water.

“Did you plug the sink?”

“Yeah. I can’t find it though, I keep picking noodles out instead.” A clump of disgusting wet noodle is flung onto the counter to punctuate her point.

“Why don’t you just drain it? It’ll get caught in the trap, right?”

She hums, still trailing an arm elbow-deep in the water. “Maybe. I’m not sure. It’s really small.”

“Everything gets caught in the trap, just drain it Mabel.”

There’s a sudden _pop!_ as she opens the drain, and the sounds of the gurgling water echoes in the kitchen. She makes fish faces at him as it disappears slowly down the sink. He smiles through the clenching of his stomach.

“I found it!” She holds a long yellow string triumphantly up to her face, and it looks like a damp, rotting noodle.

“That’s a relief,” he offers, and tucks his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts so she can’t see the way his fingers twitch. She hums a mix of three or six popular songs as she reties the thread securely around her wrist. _Now_ , he thinks, while her eyes are straining to catch delicate pieces against her skin. He takes a deep breath through his nose and coughs. “So,” he starts, and his tongue is thick against his teeth as he tries to catch his courage. “I signed up for summer camp.”

She tilts her head to the side, tongue out in concentration as she fumbles with the knot. “I didn’t know Gravity falls did a summer camp.”

“If they do I wouldn’t know.” He shrugs, trying for nonchalance as he looks consciously out the window.

“But,” she starts, and her smile falters. “We said we would see them again next summer. That’s this summer! Next summer is this year!”

The sun is setting on early evening, dragging long rays of cold light out across the ground. He can see a squirrel rolling across the ground like a furry volleyball, too fat to support itself. It sits at the base of tree and looks up, despondent. “There’s a program that just came out this year. It’s opening for the first time, and Mr. Ellis — you know him — he showed me the pamphlet and he said he thought I might be interested and he’s right. So I signed up. I mean, I signed you up too, just in case, you can always back out but if you want the spot I thought I’d better at least put a word in —”

“Woah, chill out bro-bro. What kind of summer camp is it that’s got you so desperate to go?” She tries valiantly to keep accusation from her voice and he appreciates it.

“Ghost harrassers started their own summer camp.”

“Oh,” she says, and her mouth goes round and wide, like she’s trying to swallow something too big. “So that’s it. But you have way more experience than those noodle brains!”

“Don’t besmirch the name of the Ghost Harassers,” he snaps, and then shuffles his feet, embarrassed. She could hear the capitals as he said them. “Look, they have experience with things I don’t, you know. Like videography and television production and stuff like that.”

“But think how much more impressive it would be if you did your own series in Gravity falls! Our stuff is way better than spooky voices in the middle of someone’s old basement!”

“But nobody would ever see our stuff. That’s the point, Mabel. You remember the Gobblewonker incident.”

She frowns and looks away. The squirrel’s disappeared. “I was really looking forwards to seeing our friends.”

She has resigned herself to this fate, and his stomach clenches around his guilt. “It’s not for the whole summer, Mabel. And.” A deep breath. “You don’t have to come with me.”

She looks at him then, and the furrow in her brows nearly makes him bite his tongue. “Of course I’m coming. There’s no way you’d be able to make good t.v. without my patented Mabel sparkle!” She laughs and it is halting and quiet, but it’s a start. “I guess I was just expecting something different. Maybe I’ll try to rope some friends in, too.”

“You have friends that like Ghost Harassers?”

She snorts. “No.But I think I can find some people who’d be interested. . .”

 

Winter melts into spring and nobody notices.

* * *

 

  
_It came one week later, just after the last bell for school had rung. She’d had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk, arm deep in her backpack as she felt around with the tips of her fingers for something scratchy and heavily decorated. Dipper’d walked on ahead for a half a street before he’d noticed._

_“What are you doing?”_

_“Looking for my cell phone.”_

_“. . . Why?”_

_“Because it’s ringing,” she’d explained, as though it were obvious. The strains of_ Cray Cray _floated out across the sidewalk to him in staticky quality as she finally fished the oblong out of her bag. “Hello, Mabel Pines, cell phone owner speaking!_

_Oh, hello.” He couldn’t see her face, curtained by long hair as she bent over to zip up her backpack. Her tone was carefully neutral._

_“Who is it?” he’d asked, but she’d shaken her head as she walked towards him, and he hadn’t asked again._

_“So you took the ride?” She already knew, of course, but she understood enough to extend the courtesy of asking._

_The voice sounded resigned, petulant. “I did.”_

_“And?”_

_“And it was fine I guess. So. Thanks, or whatever.”_

_And she’d opened her mouth and laughed._


End file.
